


Tin Star Salvation

by HalfshellVenus



Category: Justified
Genre: Community: 5_prompts, Community: writerverse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 03:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalfshellVenus/pseuds/HalfshellVenus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(S1): By all accounts, Boyd should have been dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tin Star Salvation

**Author's Note:**

> For the **writerverse** prompt of "Luck Has A New Look," and for this **5_prompts** picture entry:

[ ](http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m243/countess_rain/Table%20pics/?action=view&current=homemadestar.jpg)

  


Boyd's chest hurt like a sonofabitch—truth, now—but he didn't care. The painkillers knocked him out when things got too rough, and when he was awake he was thinking.

Thinking about Raylan and salvation, and the mystery of chance.

By all accounts, Boyd should have been dead. That was the part that didn't make sense. Raylan shot him clear as day (Boyd's fault that it came to that, he couldn't pretend it wasn't). Raylan was known for his deadly aim, and Boyd had felt the reality of it, as far as he remembered.

Still, he'd woken up in a hospital bed feeling like he'd been buried under the worst cave-in any mine had ever had. Boyd was tired and sore and covered in bandages, but somehow still alive. He couldn't help but wonder what it all meant.

What if he'd been given a reprieve, if the Lord had offered him mercy in the hope of Boyd turning his life around? What if the path he'd been on (never righteous, he'd always known that) could be forgiven or at least atoned for by bringing faith and goodness to the world instead?

All of these questions returned to Boyd as he lay in that hospital bed, prison-bound and yet filled with hope the likes of which he'd never felt before.

Raylan was the key, whether the man had any notion of that fact at all.

Boyd's new opportunities had come to town wearing a tin star and a Stetson, offering him a chance for redemption after years of chasing every easy dollar and committing no end of hatred and wrong.

Boyd never would have guessed that was coming, but he'd have been a fool not to see it for what it was.

He was beaten up and scarred inside and out, but for the first time in ages, Boyd was truly grateful.

 

 _\----- fin -----_


End file.
